Montebello February 15, 2008

Albert Highe

I've been a mentor to a local youth for almost a year. I've been waiting for the right opportunity to take him observing. We needed a combination of weekend night, early sunset, 1st quarter Moon, clear skies, and lack of other commitments. Tonight was that opportunity. I took him and my 13" f/4.5 to Montebello.

Conditions were pleasant (for me). My young friend Matthew didn't dress warm enough, despite my warnings. The temperature dropped to the mid-40's. I didn't measure relative humidity, but there wasn't a trace of dew. There was no wind.

We started with the Moon a little after 6PM, before the contrast rendered the orb blindingly bright in the 13". I don't know the Moon well, but I showed him three very different craters that were well situated along the Terminator: Clavius, Copernicus, and Plato. He quickly picked out the arc of craterlets within Clavius, the first sporting a central peak. He noticed that feature without prompting and asked about it. I explained the mechanics of impact and rebound - cool. As it grew darker, the Moon cast bright shadows on the ground - an effect he had never noticed before. The view in the eyepiece had begun to leave lasting afterimages. I had to attach a Moon filter to the eyepiece.

He was impressed by the three peaks within Copernicus, the height of the crater rim, and the ejecta of surrounding material. He was awestruck that it was 810 million years old (data from "Discover the Moon", by J. Lacroux and C. Legrand, which we used as our reference). He asked whether there were craters on the Earth, which sparked a discussion about known impacts and effects of weathering.

Finally, the darkened, smooth floor of the crater Plato demonstrated how lava could fill the valley, obliterating detail.

All this time he was steering the telescope himself, getting comfortable with reacquiring the Moon when it drifted out of view, and moving back and forth among the three distinct craters. I then told him to point the telescope to the reddish "star" about 3 degrees away. He quickly found it and remarked that it wasn't a star. It looked like a moon. I told him it was Mars. We discussed why it didn't appear circular, that it had phases like the Moon. He wanted to see more. I explained that planets are visible at different times of the year (and quietly told myself I was saving the best for last).

Then, using the laser pointer, I showed him several constellations around the sky. The Moon washed out fainter stars, but that made seeing brighter stars less confusing. Referring to Star Atlas 2000, I showed him patterns on paper and then drew them with green light on the sky: Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, etc. Interestingly, his young eyes had no difficulty seeing the Pleiades. Without prompting, he told me it looked like a little dipper. But he particularly liked the view of it in the 50mm finder, which resolved the cluster into even more stars. He steered the scope over to the North Star to discover it had a faint companion. I then took control of the scope and we observed the Double Cluster, the Little Dumbbell Nebula, M81 and M82, and The Orion Nebula. Each sparked a discussion about origin, distance, age, etc.

It was approaching 8PM, and he was quite cold, so I told him to steer the scope over to the creamy white brighter star low in the eastern sky. He aligned it on the crosshairs of the finder. When he peered into the main scope's eyepiece his head jerked up and he exclaimed "NO WAY!" He had just discovered Saturn and its rings. He had no idea such detail would be so easily visible in a telescope. Now the cold didn't matter. He was transfixed. As he stared he started seeing little "stars" around the planet. I explained that each was one of Saturn's moons. We counted five: Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus. We probably would have seen Iapetus, but I didn't have a chart with me to go looking for it. Despite the low elevation, seeing was remarkably good (9mm Nagler T6). Stars along the horizon barely twinkled.

We packed up and left the lot just before 9PM. Before we reached the bottom of the hill, he must have asked me three times if we could observe again sometime.

Albert